aRTee

In theory, yes. Just open a konsole / xterm, do su and enter your root password, then type lilo and see what it tells you (added linux etcetc) ; the name with the star after it is the default one to boot.

Check what /etc/modules.conf says about your soundcard, which module gest loaded... (ps hey what happened with the cd's you had trouble burning? Got things going I guess..?)

???? I'm sorry, but I have the impression that various people here, me included, understand perfectly what your problem is. Use the normal xfconfig file, the one that includes 1400x1050 Then check /var/log/XFree86.0.log (or whatever comes closest to that name) Post it here if you have to (if you can't figure it out by yourself) ; in any case, there will be some indication that it doesn't take 1400x1050 as a real resolution, but the virtual screen will be set to that resolution. Others and I have had this, and we managed to solve it. It is remedied by putting in a modeline for the 1400x1050 resolution; you have to create this, then restart X, or start a second X while pointing at the adapted XFconfig file. See on my website for instance, howto page, graphical stuff. It's all there.

Darn, can't order from Switzerland (or any country outside US)... Anyone able to go by and pick up 5 copies for me? (hey, at 0.99$...) I could in return pay something else worth 5$ plus the shipping .. Oh and if Heretic is also at such a price, I'll have one of those too (or 2). Anyone able and wanting to help out? Pretty please?

I checked on that site I mentioned; http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=1425 is the result for the extigy. It can work, not sure if you can have all functionality though. Scanner: found only Genius-Kye ColorPage-Vivid Pro (don't know if this is yours; check the usb id if necessary): http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=546 Iomega: I suspect that it works with the usb-storage driver, so should be fine; found only similar drives (250 for instance). Give it a try. About scanners: those must be the most poorly supported devices in linux, check on mostang/sane. See also my website, links page.

For usb devices another 'must check' link is: http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/ more up to date than the mdk list... also people can ask for or give tips on how to set things up.

In that case, you have to create a modeline with the correct info, and put that in your xfconfigfile. I have had similar problems where just putting a resolution wouldn't work, but putting a modeline would function. If it is wrong in some way, you can find it in /var/log/XFree86.0.log (or so) Which if you put 1400x1050 right now will be the case, have a look. (It may tell you: mode 1400x1050 ... not supported) Then you know you are going to have to do it with modelines. The errors you get with modelines will be along the line of: horizontal thisorthat not divisible by 8 (or whatever). Just play with them; there's a website where you can put in the desired resolution and refresh rate, and it will calculate what to put. google for 'calculate modeline' (for instance: http://koala.ilog.fr/cgi-bin/nph-colas-modelines is one of the sites that may be useful) Oh yeah, disclaimer: use at your own risk... ;)

I will comment more tonight (hey I have work to do here), but as far as the PLF stuff goes, yes, no Mdk should be without. I did it the easy way: just did all installation + config + extra plf stuff, then installed a whole bunch, including dvd-rip and libdvdcss2 etcetc, with urpmi --noclean [program] then just took all the stuff in the standard urpmi download dir (forgot where it puts those files), and burnt the 3 cds of the download edition, but the second and 3rd got the extra files (100MB all together, includes java, mozilla-java, realplayer, octave, opera, etcetc). Then I tell my friends who get these 3 special cd's that they just have to plunk those extra files from disc 2 and 3 in a dir, and add that as a removable repository. Then urpmi works fine again. No cable necessary. ;)

In your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 do you have any modelines? The nvidia driver may not accept all the same lines. Other than that, check the file /var/log/XFree86.0.log (or similar, don't recall exact name) and have a look why it's setting the virtual deskspace resolution higher than the actual one. It will tell you which modes got accepted. BTW in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 you don't have a virtual size defined larger than the normally requested largest size? (it's in the same section) For examples of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 you can check mine, have a look at my specs (link in sig).

I finally ordered some games: Creatures3 IE, Railroad Tycoon II ( ? ) and Majesty. Delivery: As I haven't had much time and only yesterday installed Majesty, but in any case: it took a lot longer than the 2 to 3 days that was mentioned on the tuxgames website (close to 2 weeks, 10 working days),.... BTW it was only Creatures and Majesty that I got sofar... However, since I live in Switzerland, the package has had to pass through customs, which may have taken some extra days. Also, unfortunately, I had to pay an extra 11 dollars on the 60 dollar shipment,... :( Just 4 dollars (6CHF) for the customs/taxes, but 7$ (10CHF) for the postal service to present the package at the customs.... rhhaaa, if I would have known, I'd have the package shipped to my brother in London; he could then have passed me the discs without any extra payment.. So I don't know when to expect RRTycoon II, and if I will have to pay taxes AND this stupid 10CHF extra charge to the postal service... The games: Creatures 3 internet edition: Installation was easy, have only had a quick look at the game, not really played it yet. It is perfect for my girlfriends niece and nephew, aside from the fact that the manual is not in German. To my pleasant surprise: the game and videofilm are in plenty of languages: English, french, german, dutch, spanish (maybe more, don't exactly remember). Now just for a german manual.... The graphics were nice, and I could play it fullscreen on 1600x1200 resolution, but it would get very crowded / full then. Also, in fullscreen standard (800x600) resolution, the refresh rate would be 60Hz, not cool. The standard 800x600 mode I get when switching to it with ctrl-alt-+/- is at 100 Hz,... My workaround: play windowed, switch to desired resolution, position viewed desktop area to contain the window exactly, and use ctrl-g to stay inside the window (ctrl-g again to get out). Majesty: installation was just as easy, some extra stuff got installed first (lpg_updater and deinstaller), then the game. I played through the first level yesterday evening, strange strategic game if you're used to RPG's or strategy where you directly command one or more entities (played starcraft, diablo I and II etc)... I'll be playing this one more soon, I liked it. BTW same 60Hz problem; same workaround. Also, this game only works in 800x600. Guess it would give those with higher res too much advantage if they could use it... Other thing: I didn't try network play yet, but have the following 2 questions: - I'm behind a NAT box, would that be problematic? - the manual states that for now, it is only possible to play against/with other linux x86 players, not linux ppc or non-linux players. Is that still the case??

Looks like I won't have time to really get around to doing this in a million years, but it's still nice to think about it,... if I lose my job or so, I'd have something to do... ;) First: people who don't like linux will not go out and buy windows, they'll get a pirated copy. Still supportive of MS statistically, so no good.... :) Second: the images on the hd were meant as in: images where mdk can install software from, if the user does urpmi I would like it not to ask for the cd's but just get that stuff from an iso image on the drive. That's why I mentioned that. It would mean there's only one disc necessary with each system, and that only for a rescue, not to install any extra software from. You're actually saying the same thing: the packages should be on the hd. Also, with the images on the hd, and automounted and added to the software/urpmi database, the user can still easily burn them to cd to do an install on another machine, if they want to. So yes, my idea was to image the whole usable system! Third: as for languages, I've been using multilanguage installs and they work fine (got English Dutch French German Italian Spanish on my box), also not a big problem to switch. Agree completely with the 'out of the box' idea. On top of that, it would be a pc that's advertised as Linux -- for those who dare ;) (don't know how to put it, but if you present things the right way, especially young people are more motivated; if everyone can do it, they often have little interest) Maybe: "for the poweruser" would be nice. For any average windows user (computer n00b) it is quite a bit nicer to have a person around who knows linux (unix)....

Thanks for the encouraging words, and yes, if I get creative I will have a go at it again for sure. (and try to improve of course!) O/T are you in France?

I don't get it that you say you are making the cd(s) you burn bootable. The iso's should be burnt as iso's, and if the iso was from a bootable cdrom, the resulting cdr will be bootable. Also, you can check the md5sum of the resulting cd (before that of the iso image on the harddrive of course) and compare to the md5sum on the mdk website. Then you are 100% sure that your cdrom can correctly read the disc.

GT7000 is not on the list, nor is GT8300 (1660), AFAICS,... The GT+number is maybe some id string of the scanner internal hardware/control chip or so?

Guys, thanks for your comments, and yes, I realise it is a bit long,.. Gowator,... no it is not translated from French, even though the website is in France, I wrote it directly in English and am a native Dutch speaker with English as a quite close second language (as in: english and american people have more than once believed I was a native english speaker after talking with me person to person for some time; however, I do believe that my written english is very likely not the same as the written english of a real native english speaker; on the other hand I get complaints from my dutch friends that I don't speak that properly anymore, and a translation of the switchsuccess story got me the remark that my dutch writing is 'very oldfashioned and germanic' -- so english is a close second language also because my native language is getting watered down). And French as a third, although it's being pushed to fourth position by my German which I get to practise more since moving to the German speaking part of Switzerland. As such I am from a non-latin culture that has a mere mention of 2 (two) noteworthy additions to the worlds cookbook, haring (raw fish) and boerenkool/farmers cabbage; with a honorary mention for french fries with mayonaise instead of ketchup (see: pulp fiction). But anyway, it seems that to raise awareness the story is too far fetched and too long, people who may understand it and would enjoy it probably already know, without having to resort to fuzzy parallells... Guess my time is better spent working on my mdk website... [edit] about the boycott wineX,... it's just to educate people if they really want to have linux games at some point, that's the best thing to do, and just buy linux native games. I'm not a real gamer, but recently purchased 3 games; the choice is not so good yet, but there are enough interesting titles... And I won't hold it against anyone if they use WineX, it's just a choice and you have to realise that it's one that in the end still empowers MS in some ways... By using linux, no wine(x), no MS programs, setting your browser to identify as itself, not IE, not buying any MS products, you are in no way supporting MS, so any bad thing MS does, I am not partially responsable for. All others who do any of the aforementioned are. Although the blame gets spread very thin, so it's not necessarily a measurable thing -- like I said I won't hold it against anyone, all it means to me is I won't have part of this blame myself. I have done all the possible that I can do. Others get to make their choices.

My server still runs 8.2, all (2) other machines at my place and 2 machines at my in-laws run 9.1. 9.1 just looks so much better than 9.0, though apart from that 9.0 was fine for me; they have fixed quite a few bugs in the MCC, but plenty remain; none that are a problem to me, mostly cosmetic problems that I've come across. Upgrading by reinstalling worked fine, did 3 machines in that way. Using the upgrade option in installation seems to be problematic at times. BTW on my main machine, I first installed the rc1 next to my 9.0, (have a 4GB partition for such things), tried some stuff, entered some bug reports (that even got fixed), then when 9.1final came out I installed that one, (had been mainly using 9.1rc1 until then, liked it more than 9.0final). If you're happy with 8.2 it's fine to stay there, but just to answer your questions: 1) don't see any problem there, but don't use latex. Text editing however works fine, and I haven't seen anyone complaining about the latex->dvi conversion. Ghostview and pdf viewers and generation (ps2pdf and in OOo) all work fine. 2) OOo works fine for me, one of the reasons I wanted to go from 9.0 to 9.1 was for the newer OOo, older one was more buggy (still not bugfree though, but good enough for me) 3) I use Opera more, but haven't bothered to get Java working with it yet; with Mozilla and Texstar's stuff it wasn't necessary.. so I have checked that mozilla works fine (my girlfriend uses it all the time, no probs there) 4) Don't know about CS, wine (and winex?) was (is?) broken on 9.1, the new version should be okay by now, maybe someone else can comment. (Check this if it's important for you to have winex.) I just play linux native games, starting on Majesty.... 5) Cable should not be a problem, helped a colleague set things up on his 9.1 server (cable modem with ethernet). 6) My tuner works fine, well, as much as it ever has. No problem under 9.1, same quality as always (or lack thereof, it's just too cheap to be really good) 7) 9.1 was fine to rebuild nvidia drivers, actually haven't updated since nvidia introduced new method of driver install though. Built some other stuff, all worked fine. Just remeber to 'urpmi kernel-source' since even if you select 'development station' you don't get the kernel-source installed... 8 ) dvd really needs plf. Don't blame Mandrake. Blame the US lawmakers (DMCA). If you don't want to add plf, for dvd-playback with xine and mplayer all you need is to get libdvdcss2 (from the plf repositories). 9) Never had problems with multiple cdroms (cdburner and dvd).... recently did change my dvd-rom boot option to use ide-scsi, but not because of any kind of problem... So can't tell you if yours will go away... Check my website to see what I did to config my machine, you may find some more info there.... total config time (excluding download time) ~2 hrs or so...

Hmmm, I think this may be normal. My epson 1660 is recognised as such (I think I selected the scannertype manually), but in xsane shows up as GT-8300 or so.. Must have to do with the drivername or something; in my case everything works fine, including the transparency light that switches on when I select 'transparency' instead of 'flatbed' mode. So don't worry about it. In any case, I wouldn't go through installing anything new/else for that. Note that there is no such thing as a GT-8300.. Wait!! just did a websearch (google) for: GT-8300 scanner and the first hit shows this (didn't even bother to open the page): VID PID Scanner ---- - 03f0 0101 HP 4100 03f0 0201 HP 6200 ... 1260 (GT-7300) 04b8 011e Epson Perfection 1660 (GT-8300) 04b8 0801 ... So don't update or anything, this is fine. Happy scanning! ;)

Okay, I figured it 'd be easy to get the point,... Anyway, the story is more aimed at not-so-technical computer users (or non computer users) that have no idea what the importance of Free Software etc could mean to them. Start about the FSF and they really don't care. Too many people put too much importance in LinusT, and not enough in GNU/FLOSS. Then the toe-twisting comments that 'we computer users should be thankful to MS, because without MS we wouldn't have all this nice stuff'. Well I'm not, and we should not be. This is one of the points of it all. (IMO the only big company we may have to thank for certain things in computer land is IBM for allowing IBM-compatible pc's. All other stuff could (and would) have been done by others. Even the pc might have been done by others...) Same about the eurolinux anti e-patent stuff. People don't care because they don't see any relevance to them. Same about TCPA, Palladium etc. So my point is, if computers (hard- and software) are vital to our existance as food is (which they are, if you don't look at individuals but companies), how can you really think it is good if you make unnecessary restrictions? I.e. software patents, tcpa, palladium etcetc... But I guess technical folks really don't care much about this kind of story. On the other hand, my girlfriend found it a good read (which means quite a bit to me) and to her it made many things much clearer. She did have to ask me some things (didn't know Richard Stallman for instance), but that's ok.

Well, couldn't make you happy with the story, at least I can make you happy with the poll options... ;)

I just put up this story, hope you like it: http://make.your.recipes.free.fr/ Enjoy, and post comments here.

BigJohn, my misunderstanding, didn't realise it doesn't show up in the listing.... Anyway, good luck,... I gave up on my hp4200c and just got the epson 1660 yesterday evening, happy that it worked out of the box (more or less), no more headaches for me. It seems that the epson iscan stuff works well for people with the 1260, so I think you have a decent chance (one reason I gave up on the hp4200c is that it is only partially supported, 8bit colour instead of 24 and limited to 600 dpi) considering the people that are successful with it.

Sorry, guess not... I do have some experience with the S630, it seems that one is partially supported; I've seen it print out a test page in colour which was not too bad (but had some horizontal striping). The S530 doesn't even show up on www.linuxprinting.org but then again that site is not always up to date..

RTF? OOo saves in XML, normally. You can actually unzip the .swx file and in it you will find the various files that make out the xml document. All are ascii, more or less human readable, well, like html or so...

I voted for OOo, since it's what I use most. Like most: latex (lyx for those who can't live without a gui), for its absolutely unrivalled goodlooking output. I also really liked WordPerfect, the 'underwater view' is what I missed most after moving to MSOffice (at work). In my current job, we use Framemaker for anything serious. Very powerful, not so userfriendly as some other programs, but at least I don't have to work with MSOffice/word. I do work with Excel, this is something where OOo has catching up to do...

This means that MS is openly admitting that FLOSS/GNU/Linux is a force that can not be silenced anymore and shoved to the side as something that is for garage hobbyists... On the other hand, it gives MS ammunition when talking to customers, before the customers would say: whatabout linux/etcetc..? And the response would be: forget that, don't take it seriously. Now the response will be: yes I've had training in that, here's why MS software is better: 1- FUD 2- more FUD 3- untrue remarks 4- FUD etc. There may well be cases where, at this moment, MS solutions are better, but open standards are the way to go, and they will FUD about it... In any case, this is not good news for FLOSS in the sense that it means 'the enemy' has cought FLOSS on the radarscreen and are developing a way to deal with it, and it is good news because it underlines that FLOSS is an alternative...